Ann Van Devanter Townsend, Founder of The Trust for Museum Exhibitions and its successor organization The Museum Exchange (TME), has devoted more than 40 years to the strengthening of Cultural Diplomacy through the visual arts. As a writer, curator, lecturer, teacher, arts administrator and organizer of national and international cultural initiatives, including 73 fine arts travelling exhibitions, Ms. Townsend has worked with museums in 46 of the 50 United States and in 25 countries on five continents.
Ms. Townsend has been proclaimed by The Art Newspaper as “a one-woman state department for culture.” Her experience includes not only extensive museum work, but also cultural projects for the United States Government and the private sector. In addition, she has masterminded important projects in the field of architectural preservation for significant historic sites.
Her work has been lauded by the press and by professionals in a broad spectrum of cultural disciplines. Ms. Townsend’s positions as Guest Curator include the Baltimore Museum of Art; the National Portrait Gallery, the Smithsonian Institution; the Indianapolis Museum of Art; the Rheinisches Landesmuseum, Bonn, Germany; the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna, Rome, Italy; and the Museum Narodowe, Warsaw, Poland.
For the U.S. State Department she assumed, for two years, the position of Director of Special Partnership Projects for the National Endowment for the Arts, an initiative to stimulate private sector support for the Endowment, and was, for two years, U.S. Commissioner for our country’s entry into the International Festival of Painting, in Cagnes-sur-Mer, France and Paris. The artists she selected to represent the U.S. won two of only three prizes awarded in these prestigious competitions.
As Director of Cultural Affairs for the Chevy Chase Savings and Loan, Ms. Townsend embarked upon her career in the field of Historic Restoration and Preservation for two landmarks in Montgomery County, Maryland: Locust Grove, the last remaining early 18th century house in the Montgomery Hall area, and the Mansion at Strathmore Hall, now part of Montgomery County’s brilliant arts center.
Ms. Townsend’s many publications and exhibitions began with Self-Portraits of American Artists 1670-1973, co-authored with Alfred Frankenstein, as the catalogue for an exhibition organized by the authors and shown in 1974 at the National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C. and the Indianapolis Museum of Art. In 1975 she organized a Bicentennial exhibition and related materials for the Baltimore Museum of Art: Anywhere So Long As There Be Freedom: Charles Carroll of Carrollton, His Family and His Maryland. The following year she organized Two Hundred Years of American Painting, culled from from 46 major U.S. museums under the sponsorship of the Department of State (USIA). This exhibition, also celebrating the Bicentennial, was shown in Germany, Yugoslavia, Italy, Poland and in Baltimore at the Maryland Science Center.
In addition to many other catalogues authored by Ms. Townsend for TME’s exhibitions, she has contributed articles to the magazines Antiques, American Heritage, Art in America and Art/World. As a resource for the United States Information Agency and American Embassies abroad, she has also lectured at museums, universities and art academies in Eastern and Western Europe and in the U.S.
Ms. Townsend holds a B.A. in International Relations from Brown University and an M.A. in Art History from the George Washington University. She was awarded a fellowship in International Economics from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.
Her professional affiliations include, among others, the National Society of Arts & Letters, the Women’s Committee of the Washington National Opera, and the Board of the American Committee to Save Tyre. She is also a member of the Cosmos Club, the Chevy Chase Club, and the Metropolitan Club of Washington, D.C.
